Connie Willis: 'I can’t think of a better place to have spent my life and I am so happy about this'

Connie Willis's gripping portrait of London during the Blitz has won the American author a remarkable 11th Hugo award.

Willis's two-volume time travel sequence, Blackout and All Clear, was voted winner of science fiction's most prestigious prize by members of the World Science Fiction Society. With 10 Hugos already to her name, Willis beat a female-heavy shortlist which also featured Lois McMaster Bujold, Mira Grant and NK Jemesin, with British author Ian McDonald the only male writer in the running. Her win means the Hugo best novel prize has now been won by a female writer 16 times in 57 years.

Opening with a quote from TS Eliot's Four Quartets, "History is now and England", Willis traces the stories of a group of time-travelling historians from Oxford. Polly goes to London, to evaluate the lives of shopgirls during the Blitz, Mike to Dunkirk, Merope to the countryside to observe evacuees. Armed with their future knowledge of when and where bombs will fall, they should be entirely safe – but then, one by one, they discover they are unable to travel back to the future. "It's hard to know what to praise more," wrote the Washington Post about Blackout. "Every detail rings true. Still, all of Willis's knowledge is subsumed in her bravura storytelling: Blackout is, by turns, witty, suspenseful, harrowing and occasionally comic to the point of slapstick." In May this year, the novels also won Willis her seventh Nebula award.

Willis was presented with her Hugo at the weekend by fantasy grand master Tim Powers. "This book took me eight years to write and during that time I tried virtually everyone's patience to the limit," she said on receiving her prize, thanking her daughter "who helped get me through this by showing me episodes of Primeval".

"I consider you all my family," she told the convention of science fiction authors and fans. "You have welcomed me into your hearts from the time when I was very young and you have been nothing but kind and accepting and supportive of me through my entire career and my life. I can't think of a better place to have spent my life and I am so happy about this."

The 2011 Hugo ceremony also saw Ted Chiang win the best novella prize for The Lifecycle of Software Objects, Allen M Steele take the best novelette award for The Emperor of Mars and Mary Robinette Kowal win best short story for For Want of a Nail.

Lev Grossman, author of The Magicians, won the John W Campbell award for best new writer.